2of7Nasi lemak pictured at Biondivino, Wednesday, March 4, 2015, in San Francisco, Calif. The plate features a combination of beef rending, coconut rice, cucumber and sambal tumis.Photo: Santiago Mejia, The Chronicle

3of7Chef Emily Lai prepares a mochi cake for her diners at her pop-up at Biondivino in S.F.Photo: Santiago Mejia / The Chronicle

4of7After delivering a meal, chef Emily Lai (left) checks on her customers at her Malaysian pop-up at Biondivino.Photo: Santiago Mejia / The Chronicle

5of7Chef Emily Lai delivers a meal to her customers at her Wednesday night pop-up at Biondivino.Photo: Santiago Mejia / The Chronicle

7of7Chef Emily Lai and her colleague Zach Zito share a laugh at Biondivino. Lai, who is one of the owners of the Rib Whip truck, has begun cooking Wednesday night pop-up dinners at Biondivino, a small Italian wine store in the Russian Hill neighborhood.Photo: Santiago Mejia / The Chronicle

Malaysian food is experiencing a micro-surge in the Bay Area. It’s not a trend, exactly — more a spontaneous arising of restaurants and food stands.

And pop-ups. Emily Lai has begun holding one on Wednesdays at Biondivino, a tiny Russian Hill shop specializing in Italian wine. Using the most rudimentary equipment, she is both honoring tradition — aiming for the right balance of sweet-tart and funk in her sardine-broth asam laksa — and flinging it aside, packing a pair of sliders with as much spice as the beef-pork patty inside can take.

Lai, who grew up in a restaurant family in Kuala Lumpur, operates two Rib Whip barbecue trucks with business partner Jon Reitz. Biondivino owner Ceri Smith long campaigned for Lai to cook Malaysian food in the store before she assented; Smith’s wine pairings, it must be said, are unconventional and startlingly apt.

Azalina’s: After gaining followings at farmers’ markets and Off the Grid, Azalina Eusope finally opened a food stand in the Market on Market. What to get: hokkien mee — stir-fried noodles with prawns and sambal — and coconut custard with rice.

Auntie Lan’s: For the past month, food stylist Penny Eng has set up a stall at the Wednesday and Sunday Civic Center farmers’ market, serving wontons in broth (a popular breakfast food) and chicken rendang over coconut rice.

Jonathan Kauffman has been writing about food for The Chronicle since the spring of 2014. He focuses on the intersection of food and culture — whether that be profiling chefs, tracking new trends in nonwestern cuisines, or examining the impact of technology on the way we eat.

After cooking for a number of years in Minnesota and San Francisco, Kauffman left the kitchen to become a journalist. He reviewed restaurants for 11 years in the Bay Area and Seattle (East Bay Express, Seattle Weekly, SF Weekly) before abandoning criticism in order to tell the stories behind the food. His first book, “Hippie Food: How Back-to-the-Landers, Longhairs and Revolutionaries Changed the Way We Eat,” was published in 2018.